Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Tabitha
Wow.
Double wow.
I didn’t come here for this. Hell, I didn’t even know Henry would be here when I made the drive up into the mountains. But being with him… It’s like air.
I’ll leave tomorrow. Return to my seminar. To my life’s path.
But today I want to relish whatever this is between us.
“I need air,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too. It’s beautiful here. We can go on a walk.”
I look down at my chest. “I think I’ll need to wear something other than your shirt.”
“I don’t know.” He rakes his gaze over me, his eyes burning into me. “You look pretty amazing in it.”
I give him a good-natured swat on his upper arm. “Do you think it’s warm enough for shorts? I mean, that storm last night really cooled it down.”
“Shorts are probably fine,” he says. “Or jeans or sweats. Whatever you have.”
I walk to the master bedroom where my suitcase is. I threw things in without really thinking because I thought I’d be alone here.
Crap. I didn’t even pack shorts. Just a pair of ratty jeans and the sweats I was wearing yesterday, which are still in a heap by the hearth.
Jeans it is, then, along with a simple black T-shirt. I don’t exactly own hiking boots, so my Brooks runners will have to do.
“Ready?” Henry asks when I return to the kitchen.
He looks like a gorgeous mountain man in a plaid button-down and jeans. On his feet are hiking sandals, another thing I don’t own.
“As good as it gets,” I reply.
“You look cute.”
I gesture to my feet. “I just hope these shoes are okay.”
“Sure, they’re fine. It’s not like we’re going to do a fourteener or anything.” He leads me outside the back way, where I see his truck parked.
“You could have parked in front,” I tell him. “That way I would have known you were here when I arrived.”
“And would you have come in?” he asks.
I inhale. “Honestly?”
“We’re doing honesty today.”
I bite my lip. “I don’t know. I mean, probably, with the storm coming and all. What choice would I have had?”
He doesn’t reply.
I probably would have turned around, now that I think of it. And I would have been caught in the middle of nowhere when that storm hit. It wouldn’t have been pretty, especially after the sun sank behind the mountains.
The morning is heavy, the sky still cloudy. The earth is soaked, and the pine needles are slick underfoot. The air has that post-storm taste. Kind of like wet dirt.
We don’t go far. The cabin sits on a slight rise, and a narrow trail loops around to a creek overrun with rain.
I match my steps to Henry’s, staying close but not touching, our hands brushing by accident and then not by accident, and then not at all, once I nearly slip on the slick mud and he catches me.
We hold hands after that.
He’s quiet. I’m worse. Words crowd my throat and jam there.
“About…you know,” he says finally.
“I wanted it,” I finally eke out. “All of it. I don’t regret it.”
His shoulders loosen a hair. “Good.”
“But I also want to do this the way I can live with in the daylight.” I swallow. “Which is a sentence I hate as much as I mean.”
He huffs a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “Daylight is inconvenient like that.”
We walk. Mud grabs my soles, and I tighten my grip on Henry’s hand.
“Tell me,” he says.
“About what?”
“About the guy. Lance.”
I shrug. “Nothing to tell.”
He rubs at the back of his neck with his free hand. “Would you be seeing him if…”
If…what? If I wasn’t in the time-sucking seminar? If I wasn’t in love with Henry?
Of course, he doesn’t know that.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “He’s part of a night I’d rather forget, so even though he’s a great guy, I’m thinking no.”
And I’m being completely honest.
“Was that night…? What almost happened… Did that have anything to do with why you didn’t come when my mom asked?”
Whoa. Is that what he’s really thinking now? I was pretty screwed up after that night—still am—but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t go running.
I drag a breath in, inhaling the damp air.
“I didn’t come to the hospital because I was afraid of turning into someone I don’t respect.
The girl who abandons the one thing she worked for because a man is bleeding.
But when your mom called? I almost did it anyway.
I almost packed a bag and got in my car.
Then I remembered you telling me we had no future, and I thought, okay, don’t go running toward nothing.
Build the future you promised yourself.”
His mouth tightens. “I earned that,” he says. “And I’m trying to un-earn it.”
I offer a small smile. “I know.”
We stand there, a foot of space and a thousand miles between us.
“Lance is a good man,” I say because it’s the truth and we promised each other honesty.
“He stepped in when it counted. He asked me out like a gentleman. I turned him down anyway. Not because I owe you anything, but because I can’t manage half measures with other people while I’m this”—I gesture between us—“compromised.”
Henry’s expression shifts. Something uncoils in his posture. He steps close enough that our breaths mix but not close enough to trap me.
“Compromised isn’t the word I’d use,” he says. “Committed, maybe. Or doomed.”
“Morbid,” I say, even as my mouth curves.
He cups my face. “I’m sorry about what happened. Every part of me wants to find that asshole and take him out.”
“I know,” I say. “And I also know what it costs you to feel that way.”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. We both know he’s still struggling with taking Ralph’s life.
He bends. I don’t stop him. He brushes his lips against mine.
The kiss is not like last night’s. It’s careful. Patient. He tastes like tea and rain. He slides one hand to the back of my neck, and I sway into him.
“Good?” he asks against my mouth.
“Different,” I whisper.
“Good different?”
“Yes.”
He kisses me again, deeper this time but still measured. I fist my hands in his shirt, which is damp from mist. I want to peel it off him.
But I also want to leave it on him because if I take it off we’ll be other people again, the ones from the storm. I’m not ready to be them. Not yet. Not until I’m strong enough to walk away again.
“Walk with me,” he says, our foreheads touching.
“We’re already walking.”
He gestures down the trail. “A little longer.”
We continue, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not.
He points to a row of columbines sprouting where the trail dips. “Angie used to pick those for Mom,” he says. “Then Sage decided, at the bright age of ten, to go into the wildflower business. She wanted three cents a stem.”
“Did she get rich?” I roll my eyes. “Sorry. Stupid question to ask about a girl with a trust fund.”
He laughs. “That’s Sage. Always looking at numbers.”
We circle back toward the cabin. My jeans are damp at the hem, but I don’t mind. The walk was just what I needed.
Air.
Air between Henry and me and whatever is going on between us.
I love him.
I love him with all my heart.
But he’s not ready to hear that yet, and I’m not ready to say it.
Plus…there’s my seminar. My career. My dream.
I can’t be a surgeon living on a ranch.
Inside, the cabin is dim. Is the power back on? Probably. I flick a light switch.
Okay, I guess not.
“It takes a while out here sometimes,” Henry says.
We head into the great room. Henry kneels in front of the hearth and brushes away excess soot from last night. Then he stacks some kindling and logs, adds crumpled-up newspaper, and strikes a match. It catches, flickering, as the paper burns quickly.
“Come here,” he says without looking back.
I go. Because of course I do.
We sit together on the rug, not touching at first. The fire cracks softly.
“I asked for you in the hospital,” he says, eyes on the flames. “Not because I thought you owed me anything. Because your name was the only one that made the room feel less…smothering.”
I blink. “Really?”
He nods. “My mom wanted to drive to Boulder and haul you back by your hair.” He reaches, tucks a stray lock behind my hair, leaving his hand there longer than he needs to.
I like the feeling.
We sit like that as the fire builds.
“So are you back at work?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah. I went in yesterday, planning to work all day until Angie called with the bright idea that I should come here to relax.”
I give a chuckle. “We both walked right into that one.”
He smiles. “Right?” Then he sighs. “Brad thinks I’m doing too much too soon, but he’s Aunt Melanie’s son, you know? Always concerned about everyone else when his own father is fighting for his life.”
“How’s he doing?” I ask. “Your uncle, I mean.”
“Good. I mean, you saw him at the wedding. Physically he looks great, except for the hair loss.”
“That’s good. And work? Do you miss it?”
“I do. I was never meant to work the ranch. I could, but it’s not my thing. I like helping people through the foundation.”
“And your mom and dad?” I ask. “How are they doing with all of this?”
“They’re overprotective. Especially Mom. But they’re dealing. What about you?”
“What about me?” I say.
“The seminar. Is it everything you thought it would be?”
Is it? “I guess so. I got a rough start. Overslept the first day.”
“After…”
I nod. “Yeah. So at least I slept, which surprised the hell out of me since I felt like I was up half the night.”
He goes a little rigid.
Is he afraid I’m thinking about Lance? Or just about that night?
“You think like a surgeon,” Henry says.
I widen my eyes. “That’s not what I expected you to say. And how would you even know? You’ve known me for approximately five minutes.”
“I paid attention for every second of those five minutes,” he says. “I know it must seem like I didn’t, that I was in all of it for myself. But it meant something to me, Tabitha. I just didn’t realize that until it was too late.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I stare at the fire. The logs settle, and a shower of sparks leaps up.
He swallows. “Tabs.”
“Don’t—” I start, because Angie’s nickname will undo me, and then I don’t finish the sentence because he’s leaning in, slower than slow.
This kiss is the opposite of a storm. It’s sunrise. Soft light over a field that was wrecked last night and is still here anyway. He moves his mouth against mine like he’s memorizing the shape of my lips, the feel of them against his own. He strokes my jaw with his thumb and then moves to my cheek.
I kiss him back as if we’ve been doing this forever. Warm and sure.
He shifts closer, knees bumping mine, and I sigh.
We end up half-leaning, half-kneeling, both of us angling for the same spot on the rug. He laughs against my mouth and eases me backward until my shoulder meets the couch. The cushion gives.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
I meet his gaze. “Why on earth would I do that?”
He smiles.
We climb up together and end up tangled on the couch, my legs over his thighs, his arm behind my head. The rain starts again. It’s not a storm this time, just a soft patter, like someone drumming fingers on the roof.
The room shrinks to the span of his body and mine, to the heat where we touch, to the steady thud of a choice that doesn’t feel like a cliff anymore.
It feels like a door.
A door I want to open.
And maybe he does too.